The transcendental soundscapes of Scott Hansen sparkle and shine in Tycho’s first Ghostly release. The San Francisco graphic designer/electronic musician stays dedicated to the musical styles of Boards of Canada and Ulrich Schnauss, with liquid keyboards drizzled over gentle beats. Long time Vinyl Gourmet favorite, this is must have electronic music!

• Designed by ISO50 (Tycho's design moniker)
• Features a 2-panel, 5mm spine, thick stock art cover Reverse finish
• Original inner art sleeves with a reverse stock finish
• 160 Gram vinyl
• Mastered at Salt Mastering Studios NY

"As life continues to move at ever-increasing speeds, music so often dissected into bite-size samples, it becomes increasingly difficult to become properly immersed in an album’s soundworld. So when a set emerges that really does surround the senses, bubbling forth from headphones to encase body and soul like the insides of an aerated chocolate treat, it’s worth highlighting. So, here’s Tycho, aka San Francisco graphic artist/producer Scott Hansen, with his second long-player, and first for the ever-reliable Ghostly International: won’t you please Dive right in?" - BBC Review

While his formative years were spent listening to everything from Yes to Photek, Scott Hansen didn't get his hands on an actual guitar or drum machine until he left his native Sacramento for San Francisco in 1995. "Encountering this whole new world at 20 years old was a profound experience," says Hansen, better known by his musical pseudonym Tycho and as the graphic artist ISO50. "At the time, I was just learning the processes of design and music; both felt very similar, and have flowed back and forth for me ever since."

As seamless as his two creative outlets have been, nearly a decade passed before the release of Hansen's first proper Tycho LP, Sunrise Projector (later expanded and reissued under the titlePast Is Prologue). And while three striking singles have emerged since then, the sum of all those sepia-toned parts is nowhere near the double-exposed soundscapes of Dive. The product of a prolonged break from IS050's design work and blog, it pays tribute to Tycho's prismatic past (the dense, guitar-guided turning points of "Daydream" and "Adrift") but spends most of its time pointing to the project's not-so-distant future.

That can mean any number of things, really, from the halcyon hooks and hopeful horizons of "A Walk" to the expansive, wildly expressive tone poetry of the title track, an eight-minute epic that unfolds like a compressed concept album. Or at the very least, a restless vision of prog-rock—one that's been coated in neon colors and filtered through a thick piece of blotter paper. And then there's "Elegy," a spare curtain closer that pairs a vulnerable crescendo with a fitting bridge to future works.

And with that, Dive establishes its position as the most diverse musical statement of Hansen's multi-medium career; the point where his skills as a performer finally catch up with his vaporized vision of a world that doesn't belong to any particular time or place.

"Nostalgia is a common thread in my work," says Hansen, "but this album wasn't driven by that idea. I see these songs as artifacts from a future which might have more in common with our past than our present."

Track Listing:

01 A Walk
02 Hours
03 Daydream
04 Dive
05 Coastal Brake
06 Ascension
07 Melanine
08 Adrift
09 Epigram
10 Elegy

Click here to listen to samples on YouTube.com ♫